If you are submitting copyrighted material, you will enter the bibliographic information for the works we will be copying.

After you submit your order, we will provide an estimate of what the coursepack will cost your students at the bookstore.

After we get the permissions, we will go over the royalties with you and make arrangements to receive your original material.

That’s it! It takes an average of 2-4 weeks to obtain copyright clearance on items to be included in your custom text, so the sooner we get started the better.

After we get all of the necessary permissions and licenses, we will contact you to get your approval for the royalty costs. On average, royalties are $0.18 per page.

Coursepacks generally take 3 days to produce once copyright clearance is complete and you have approved the royalty costs. After the initial printing, any additional copies take only 24 hours to produce. Your personal account representative will be available to answer any questions, and will keep you up to date on the copyright clearance process.

Coursepacks can be ordered via telephone, fax, mail, or online. To order online, just close this window and follow the link to the online order form. This is all the information we need to get started!

Remember, there is no cost to the professor or author, and we get your price approval before we go to press.

We use digital equipment including Xerox Docutech copiers and Heidelberg full color digital presses to assure the printed material we deliver is the highest quality available. We can customize your text or documents any way you like, using full color copies, inserts, tab dividers, or anything else you may need.

In the meantime, we offer CDs and DVDs with custom labels and packaging, sold independently or packaged with printed materials.

If you have any questions about your digital CoursePack options, please contact us.

A work of prose meets the brevity test if ‘it is either a complete article, story or essay of fewer than 2,500 words; or an excerpt from any prose work of not more than 1,000 words or 10% of the work, whichever is less. An illustration meets the brevity test if it consists of one chart, graph, diagram, cartoon or picture per book or periodical issue.

The brevity guidelines contain an inclusive category termed special works. These are works of poetry, prose or “poetic prose” which often combine language with illustrations, are intended sometimes for children (and at other times a more general audience) and fall short of 2,500 words. Special works may not be reproduced in their entirety; however, an excerpt comprised of no more than two of the published pages of a special work, and containing not more than 10% of the words found in the entire text thereof, may be reproduced.

Spontaneity
A work passes the spontaneity test if it meets two conditions: the copying is at the instance and inspiration of the individual instructor, and the inspiration and decision to use the work and the moment of its use for maximum teaching effectiveness are so close in time that it would be unreasonable to expect a timely reply to a request for permission to copy.

Cumulative Effect
Finally, for material to meet the cumulative effect test, the copying of the material must be for only one course in the school where the copies are made: and not more than one short poem, article, story, essay or two excerpts may be copied from the same author, nor more than three from the same collective work or periodical volume during one class term. Cumulative effect prohibits more than nine instances of such multiple copying for one course during a class term.

The guidelines outlaw unauthorized copying for the purpose of creating, replacing, or substituting for anthologies, compilations or collective works. Also prohibited is unauthorized copying of works intended to be “consumable” in the course of study or teaching, such as workbooks, exercises, standardized tests and test booklets and answer sheets.

Under the guidelines, unauthorized copying may not be substituted for the purchase or books, publishers’ reprints or periodicals, or be repeated with respect to the same item by the same teacher from term to term. Finally, the students may not be required to pay an amount greater than the cost of the copying.

For more detailed information, you can visit the official U.S. Copyright Office Home Page

Under the Fair Use Doctrine, all of the following four factors must be considered together when determining whether or not a copyrighted work may be reproduced without permission from the copyright holder:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. The nature of the copyrighted work;

3. The amount and substantiality of the portion to be reproduced in relation to the work as a whole; and

4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Teachers often point to the Fair Use Doctrine as authority for reproducing a copyrighted work. Contrary to this popular misconception, however, is the fact that a work used for educational purposes does not automatically justify its wholesale reproduction to the degree that the copyright is infringed.

The Fair Use Doctrine’s four-step test presents a trait found in many acts of Congress in that it is somewhat vague.

In an effort to cure the vagueness, a consortium comprised of the Ad Hoc Committee on Copyright Law Revision, the Authors League of America and the Association of American Publishers, Inc. in 1976 issued Guidelines for Classroom Copying of Books and Periodicals.

The guidelines provide conditions allowing an instructor to copy without permission any of the following for scholarly research, or for use in teaching - or preparing to teach - a class: a chapter from a book; an article from a periodical or newspaper; a short story, short essay or short poem, whether or not from a collective work; and a chart, graph, diagram, drawing, cartoon or picture from a book, periodical, or newspaper.

An instructor may -without first obtaining permission from the copyright holder - make multiple copies (not to exceed more than one copy per pupil in a course) for classroom use or discussion only, however, if the copying meets the guidelines’ tests of brevity, spontaneity and cumulative effect, and if each copy includes a notice of copyright.

NEARLY EVERY FORM OF WORK commonly used in a classroom - books, periodicals, essays, monographs, music, videos, photographs, websites, and more - is subject to copyright protection. A copyright doesn’t protect the work itself; rather, it protects the rights that belong to whoever controls the copyright in that work. The holder of a copyright in a particular work has the exclusive right to determine who may reproduce all or part of the work, distribute copies of it, prepare derivative versions of it, and perform or display the work. The law gives a copyright holder permission to enforce against unauthorized reproduction or distribution of the copyrighted work. This affords the copyright holder the right to sue - and collect monetary damages from - a person or institution that violates the copyright.

Lawsuits by authors and publishers against individuals - and even educational institutions - over copyright violations are not uncommon.

What is Public Domain?
Public domain means that the creator of the work has given up or lost all rights to the work. It means that you may do anything with the work that you want - read it, copy it, publish it, change it. Public domain doesn’t mean a work is owned by no one; it means it is owned by everyone.

When does a work pass into the Public Domain?
This is a simple question with a very complicated answer. It starts off simple- Anything published before 1923 is now in the public domain. After that it gets complicated. It can depend on whether is was originally published with a copyright notice, whether the copyright was renewed, etc.

Here is a chart that details when works pass into the public domain.

What is the Fair Use Doctrine?
The Fair Use Doctrine, allows limited circumstances under which a copyrighted work may be reproduced without the copyright holder’s express permission.

Under the Fair Use Doctrine, all of the following four factors must be considered together when determining whether or not a copyrighted work may be reproduced without permission from the copyright holder:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial or for non-profit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion to be reproduced in relation to the work as a whole; and
4. The cumulative effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.